I have 1g google fiber in my apartment, and a few weeks ago I noticed I noticed when connected to my work VPN, I would get 2.5mbs of download speed. For the last year that I’ve lived here though it was normal for me to have at least 60mbs.
The weird thing is, this slowdown only happens on my home google fiber internet and only for my work VPN. If I connect to another VPN like NordVPN, I get around 60 - 90mbs. If I connect to my work VPN anywhere other than home (coffee shop, using 5g on my phone), same thing, around 60 - 90mbs. However when I connect to my work VPN either through my router or directly, I get a max of 3mbps.
I bought a new router thinking that might help (it didnt). I contacted my IT department and they aren’t doing anything to slow down my connection. That makes sense too since I don’t experience this slowdown when I’m at a coffee shop. The only thing I can think of is that for some reason, Google Fiber does not like my work VPN connection and is throttling it HARD.
Some preemptive thoughts. Yes I know VPNs slow down your internet connection. What I’m talking about here is an abnormal slowdown for 1 specific VPN, and only on my Google Fiber internet connection. Like I said other VPN’s like NordVPN connected to a server in the same region as my job have normal slowdown speeds, and connecting to this VPN anywhere other than my apartment is fine.
Also worth nothing that when not connected to my work VPN at home, I’m getting around 800mbps download speed so it’s not because the internet connection itself is slow.
Would really appreciate any insights anyone might have. Has anybody else experienced this? Not sure if this helps but my work VPN is using cisco anyconnect. I’m on a M1 mac.
EDIT: Google never addressed this. What worked for me is setting up a double VPN (one on my router pointed to a server close to my work VPN server). If you’re running into an issue like this, I would suggest that or getting a different ISP.
Could be an anyconnect bug. Have you tried it on a different computer or laptop? Tough to test if you don’t have a controlled environment to eliminate possibilities.
Ask IT if something has changed with the VPN. Maybe they changed the connection speed. Or they moved users over and it’s just bigger down. Or they moved the VPN server to another computer and missed something in the settings.
Ideally, test this with your computer using different internet pipes. Like from a friend’s house, or a store/library, or cellular hotspot.
Ok an update for anybody curious. Both Google Fiber and my IT department says it’s not their problem. Not sure which one is wrong but I know one of them is. My bet is Google Fiber simply becaue my work VPN is not slow everywhere…just at home…no matter the device used.
Thanks to some comments I just setup a stacked VPN setup. Using NordVPN on my TP link router using a server in Atlanta, and then connecting to my work VPN which has it’s servers in Gainesville, resolves the issue.
Weirdly enough, I’m getting more than double the speed to my work VPN than I used to get with this double VPN setup (220mbs vs 90mbs).
I just signed up for ATT Fiber, and going to see if using their internet fixes the problem enough that I don’t need to use this double VPN setup.
Can you do a trace route to the VPN endpoint? I’ve seen GFiber do some weirdly long routes for my old work VPN. We even went so far as to set up a peering connection with Google but people in the same city as the physical VPN hardware (Provo, UT) would get routed through Kansas to reach our VPN. They eventually fixed it but not because we complained - they just ignored us when we did manage to get in touch with someone with a brain. They’ve got some weird routes set up.
Some ISP’s do more thorough inspections on packets going through certain VPN’s. It’s also not extremely abnormal for a work VPN to have a better encryption, which could slow down speeds I believe. Only the first one of those could explain why it only happens on your gfiber. Depending on what encryption protocol your work vpn uses, it may be that Google fiber doesn’t handle it as well. My works vpn can do either ipsec or ssl, some people struggle on ipsec, but ssl works fine for them.
VPN sends all traffic through your work internet. It will be slower then depending how fast your work internet is. And also some VPNs are not very fast either. This is normal.
I had a similar issue with AnyConnect, an M1 mac, and ethernet. I checked with several of my coworkers who also have GF, the same device, and live close to me. So we were using a lot of the same infra. They did not have the slowness.
The resolution was that IT had to cycle the VPN instance and speeds restored instantly. The theory was that something was cached causing my connection not be as performant.
After that was fixed I started getting packet drops. It was most noticeable with Zoom. Again consulted coworkers, they were not impacted. But they were also all using wireless, I was wired. Traced that down to the Netgear switches I was using, after finding a bunch of apple support threads of other people having issues. I do wonder if this was a contributor to the original problems. I had multiple of them chained in my network and they both seemed to be dropping packets. After removing them I haven’t seen any networking issues on VPN.
A few other things I tried along the way that made no difference:
Installed latest client. The client may be so old that you are running the amd64 version which has to be translated to arm64. Look in Activity Monitor at the vpn process if the “Kind” column says “Intel”, then you are running a version that isn’t optimized for the m1.
yea I experience this on my phone as well. I also experience this when connecting my ethernet cable directly to the wall so I don’t think routers have anything to do with it. It’s the weirdest thing.
I did, they aren’t aware of any changes. I’m going to ask again though to and bring up some of these specifics to see if they just forgot something.
Thing is, I have tested this on another device (my phone using 5g) and in different locations outside my apt. I don’t experience the same slowdown, so I’m not convinced it’s purely a VPN issue if at all.
Yes, Google have some strange network bottlenecks for some reason - the most noted one seems to be limited Azure peering slowing anything on Azure down for Google customers.
Using a VPN forces all the traffic to go through whatever the route is between Google and the VPN site - usually this helps since commercial VPNs are well connected, but in this case it’s the problem. As another comment suggested a double-VPN could help - forcing everything onto the route to that other VPN first, then between that VPN provider and work.
I think you might be on to something. Ran a traceroute to my work vpn and the path is indeed very long for some reason. I opened a ticket with them and sent them a bunch of traceroute results so hopefully they can do something.
I tried both off and on, but honestly because the issue persists when I connect via ethernet none of the wifi settings matter.
Just today though I did try connecting to my work VPN without the double vpn setup and the issue seems resolved now. Looking at the traceroute, looks like they updated my network path to a much more efficient path.